Stargirl
by Coco-Minu
Summary: He guesses he just never wished hard enough. Oneshot, DracoxLuna.


Summary: _He guesses he just never wished hard enough._

Note: So, a group of friends (Kawaii Kabu, Mikey, Lucas) and I decided very promptly that this would be a really good, if strange, couple. Seriously. Note the serious face-ness of this. So I decided I would give it a little search. Although there are over three hundred stories, not may of them keep Draco in character. So Kawaii Kabu and I decided that we would make it our duty to keep Draco in character, with the inspiration of '_Bruitism_' by Novocain, who did it so very wonderfully it stole me away.

Warning(s): Pay attention to the numerals, strange order, dark, a tad angsty, mentions of M rated stuff.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling.

* * *

**Stargirl**

* * *

**I. Nothing**

* * *

It is July the fifth.

It is Draco's birthday. But what he wants and what he gets never coincide. Sweets from Mother dearest, money and regards from Father idol, meaningless kisses from Parkinson girl even though he'd fallen from her favour. He supposes they were showing affection, in some odd way. But he has never known affection, or anything like it. He has known smothering and over-protection, and something akin to love that doesn't quite really mean anything at all.

"Give me something, Lovegood."

She's just a victim - _silly, silly, silly, little _– girl with dreamy eyes and no interest in him whatsoever. Everyone calls her a lunatic. He should know; he invented the name 'Loony Lovegood'. He is the one to make fun of the magazines she read, the one to tell others to hide her things and pay them to do it, the one to torture her as best he could. But she stared up at him from her seat under the tree and put the latest piece of rubbish she was reading down. She pays attention, even if her gaze is far off.

"But you don't have so much."

She says it so easily in her not-quite-there voice, playing with the hem of her old pink button-up coat. Her hair is tumbling down over her shoulders messily, there is a streak of dirt on her cheek that is rapidly crusting and he is pretty sure he can see some new odd form of jewellery around her neck yet she thinks he is the one who doesn't have much? He has his name, his honour, he has beauty.

"I have everything."

He tells her, caught up in his thoughts. He asked for something not expecting that. He had followers (not friends, never friends) and he had someone who loved him (his Mother, never that stupid smothering girl) and he had someone to look up to (his Father, never He-who-must-not-be-named as he said). Then suddenly, he hisses, starting away from her. He doesn't like her look. He doesn't like her nonexistent ways. He doesn't like her and how she just got under his skin without really even trying.

"You own nothing."

She whispered softly, and in between the curve of her never understandable smile and the shadow lingering in her eyes he sees truth. He finds it almost ironic that such a – _pathetic, protection needing, useless little_ – girl is able to see things behind those brightly coloured glasses she wears most of the time. He thinks her childish, malicious, needing to hurt him. He jolted backwards, flexing away. He doesn't need anything anymore. Not from anyone, and certainly not from her.

"Lovegood."

He spits, storming off. She knows – _nothing, absolutely nothing, what a stupid little girl to think she did with those ridiculous spectrespecs and talking in that weak wispy little voice with a knack for _– honesty. Blunt, unfeeling honesty. She was a blood-traitor, worse than a mudblood; she was a stupid little girl who knew nothing of what mattered. Money talked. Care, friendship, love did not.

She is taken the next day when she leaves for the holiday, locked in his basement like an animal in a cage and he thinks it is where she belongs and he feels – _triumphant, exalted, proud_ – everything he thinks he should, he tells his Aunt.

He feels nothing.

* * *

**VI. Maybe**

* * *

"You'll call for me one day."

He tells her, tone languid, needing an excuse. Or something like that.

"I wouldn't call for someone who doesn't want me."

She says it almost certainly, reality in her voice. She is unreality, and she is speaking like she knows everything and it makes him laugh.

"You will."

He is overly confident, almost certain it will happen. She will not call, and he will not come to find her. He knows that much. So he inhales her scent on his robes – _diving in like someone at sea and waiting to drown because she was just like that in her nevermore mind and anyone could get lost in those colourless eyes because parting was such a nice smelling solace_ – smiling because he can't wait until she crawls back to him.

He goes back to her on his hands and knees.

* * *

**II. Almost**

* * *

"Malfoy."

Luna observes, using his second name dryly. He doesn't know how she can tell that it's him in the pitch black; he doesn't really want to know either. She has some strange form of intuition, or something like it, and he never wants to be able to see how she uses it. He doesn't trust her, and he doubts he ever will. She's just a captive. Nothing special. Nothing to him. She's worth nothing. Like him.

"Aren't you going to run?"

She's worth nothing, but he'd let her. He's never heard her voice sharp. She's always been a target, a toy for the people around her, a doll they stabbed with harsh words. But never once had he heard her use a tone like that. It would almost be better if she cried and begged him to set her free.

"Where would I run to?"

He can still see the feel of Ollivander's old, cracked fingers curling around hers for comfort some time ago, and the way she looked at him blankly when he came down to drag the aged man out feeling no remorse because it'd save him and crack his soul a little more. He remembers thinking he'd never seen anyone so dead inside. What he sees the most is her dirty hair, spilling down her back before she turns to slap him with sharp contempt. Trying to prove that she could be useful too.

"Anywhere."

Her eyes are dry, but it doesn't mean she's not sad. She smiles awkwardly, her cracked lips bleeding slightly. Strange, how the only person who understands him – _the only person he can call his own_ – is someone he doesn't really want. But she's trapped. She's his, and he can't remember not wanting anything more. He's just offered everything she needs – _but him, his smile, whatever it is he supposes she really wants_ – but she's turned it away. That's more than he was ever able to do.

"But then where would you run to, without me here?"

She muttered dully, her voice almost breaking. She was being more open and talkative that day, and he was thankful for it even if what little mystery she possessed became another luxury his people had stripped from her. _There is no freedom_, her ghost of a smile whispers. _There is no other side of the bars_.

"I don't need you!"

He shouts, without really meaning to. He is beautiful, with sharp angles in his face and high cheekbones and sharp long-lashed eyes. She has the kind of features that look plain at first glance, but when he watches her on the rare occasion he goes down there, and she throws her head back and laughs a little at him, or her teeth grit and she refuses to cry, and her hands in her lap and her never there gaze resurfaced, there is no point in denying she has something.

"You need anything but your name."

She says back without any hint of hesitation. Malfoy. He clung to it like it meant everything, like it meant he was something special. It showed that he was pureblood, that he had money because money talks and she doesn't, and he has the dark mark on his arm and it means nothing at all. He sits up, wanting to hold her thinner by the day body against his for a second and feel her break in his grasp because the sick pleasure would be worth it. Instead, he stands up, walks away again. She's not worth it, he thinks. She is nothing. She means nothing. She is gone the next day.

He almost regrets it.

* * *

**III. Wings**

* * *

She is in flight.

There is a large gash in her robes and blood streaked down one of her cheeks, an uglier thing than the dirt before it, and she is aiming to stun instead of kill. He is a coward, and murder is something he cannot amount, not even for her. But when his Aunt slides across the room, he is thankful that the Weasley woman gets to her first. Luna is his to fight. She knows it, too, for as soon as he moves towards her a nasty looking hex springs towards him. It takes him a matter of seconds to shove her nastily through the door into the corridor using brute force. She is smaller than him, and her spells are too. She cannot fight him. But she will anyway, and he knows it from the start.

"Go ahead."

She says, her voice vague as he raised his wand to her neck. He liked it when she used to keep hers behind her ear; it made her an easy target. But hers was digging into his back, and he couldn't help but lower his. Instead, he lowered it to her collarbone. Still dangerous, still a warning, but not quite there. He would kill her. He could do it so easily. Her death wouldn't bother him in the slightest.

"Kill you? Why should I do that?"

It's then that he decides that if he is nothing and she is something – _because this is unfair really, he's worked for everything and gained little and she's just a silly little hare walking into his rabbit trap_ – then he will change that. He will make her nothing. He will make her just like him and he will laugh in her unflinching face when she hurts herself. He will make her break. He'll make her scream.

"Because you want to."

She whispers calmly. He looks in her empty, distant eyes and smirks coldly. Oh, and didn't she know it. He wanted it more than anything. But he wouldn't soil his own hands, not once. He leans in, raising his other hand and stroking her pale neck with his almost sickly white hand. Pushes her up against the wall. Feels her body, even weaker than his and even more pathetic and useless pressed up against him like it meant something intimate. Even almost like they were lovers.

"Almost correct."

He corners her, seeing fear finally seep into her never there expression and claw its beastly way into her eyes. She's always known everything. Almost. He bites her neck gently, nuzzles her jaw, stops at her open mouth when he feels her shivering under his touch. It shouldn't end like this. She shouldn't snap. It should be him. Somehow, he supposes he has when he lowers the wand and she speaks a question on to his lips.

"You want me?"

Something in her voice cracks. His smirk broadens, and in a flash of his white teeth his lips are submerging hers. His wand is on the floor, her hair is in his hands and everything about her is consumed by him. She could have run back then, but she would never hide. She knew it would come to this. She knew he'd hate her. She knew he'd break her, and she was letting him. She hadn't said stop. She didn't want to wake up just yet. She was lost in him, just as he was lost in her words. Then he pulled away, let her crash to the floor and stare up at him like a muggle doll with wide shocked eyes. He bent down, neared to her again, closed his eyes and felt his eyelashes on her round cheeks, picked up his wand and drew away. His smirk dropped, and he looked at her with contempt.

Something like that, maybe.

* * *

**V. Wasteland**

* * *

Up in smoke.

Everything is going up in smoke; and her somewhat-almost-friend Harry was probably dead, the anti-thesis Granger girl was going to be imprisoned like she had been once upon a time, cheery-joking-man (not boy, anymore) Ron was cracking but not with laughter and she herself was caught in what could have happened. She knows Malfoy will flee. He's a coward-soldier-child who doesn't know how to handle things and doesn't understand the most important things. He believes in money and Malfoy and tin gods. He wouldn't understand at all. He'd laugh at the wasteland; say they deserved it for their stupid ideas like silly little girls making a difference.

Then she is dreaming again and she always dreams and Malfoy is in front of her shouting run – _run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm a Malfoy _– and she feels him take her hands and suddenly everything feels to be some semblance of her surreal reality again. He hasn't come and she has no reason to wait for him but he is there, he is there and he is telling her to abandon her friends because she doesn't know why and he wants her to be safe. This isn't Draco, Draco is cruelty and fake smiles and this isn't Malfoy because Malfoy is something dark and scary and more than this.

"Luna, now!"

He yells and she is lost in him. In his cold grey eyes and sickly paper-coloured skin, the shadows under the somewhat smile and everything about him. She is breathless, and she cannot run because if she does he will too and he needs to live even if it means that he cannot have freedom to fly.

"Harry never gives up."

Then a roar as a congregation of tongues call out loudly, and Harry is alive. Harry Potter is the chosen one and he is attempting to take down He-who-must-not-be-named right there. Malfoy has no faith; she can see it. His fake God is falling and he's standing there clinging to her like release and she doesn't know what to say or do. So she pats him on the shoulder as he collapses into her, smiling the whole time.

"I am Malfoy."

'_I am bad faith, rotting away whatever is left of my soul'_, he should have said. But she understands what he means, because he is Draco and she is Luna and neither of them were ever quite there or meaning anything. He is poisoned by rotting secrets and she can't take them away, but she can make him taste her unreality.

"No, you are Draco."

She tells him and he grips her arm like he means it even though he never had eyes for her anyway. Her mad grin is fading along with whatever sanity she possesses. Harry will win, Harry will win and Draco will have faith because he isn't Malfoy he is him and she believes in him.

"I will never love you."

She'll believe in him. But not that. Anything but that.

* * *

**VII. Schneewittchen**

* * *

Nineteen eighty one.

She is born after him, and unlike him she doesn't wish for many material goods. Her father tells her stories about things that don't exist when her mother dies and that is a gift enough for her, not that she ever knows it's all a lie. Malfoy knows this. Draco thinks him kind, if a little odd, but he'd never say it. He doesn't know her exact birthday or the day her mother died but he knows they're somewhat near and that's enough to give him a reason to try to stop her flight again.

"The things don't exist. Your Father made them up to help you sleep."

He whispers icy words with fiery breath in her ear as she curls into a ball on the grass, watching the gnomes in her garden run around without much worry. Gernumblies, she called them. She thought their saliva was going to give her gifts if they bit her. So she is sitting and holding out her snow white finger, as if wishing for it and he doesn't know why he's sitting with her doing this when he could be doing better things but he can live with it for then because it means something to him.

"You call yourself a wizard?"

She muses, and he immediately feels offended. Another pureblood is insulting him, and not only that but she's a pureblood who likes muggles and hangs around that mudblood Granger and fished for these things called freshwater plimpies and everything that came out of her mouth was dreamy and not quite there, even when she was being serious.

"What do you mean by that?"

She is pumping anger into his veins like the wanderlust in hers, and she laughs at him and it stings because he actually does care. She's a silly little girl and he hates her so much – _so very very much because she doesn't know what it's like to live in the real world _– and it is his obsession to make her nothing just like him – _because she doesn't deserve to escape _- and he needs to more than anything.

"You don't believe in magic."

No, he believes in real magic and pretty words because pretty words mean everything. Her Hogwarts will melt, her bridges will burn and the simple daises in her hair will wilt into nothing but a mashed up clump of petals and dirt. These things don't last, but the words do, and his face does, and in the end she will be anything but pretty.

"I don't."

He confirms. He is attractive, and he has – _gorgeous, beautiful_ – stunning face. It's easy to love the taste of beauty. Pansy tasted like smudged lipstick, running mascara and ugly fleshy monsters in disguise. That one time he kissed this girl she tasted of fear, fresh and painful and raw and heartbreak and she will never know he thinks her prettiest when she's terrified and anything is better than her crying because he thinks that will be the most beautiful thing she ever does in front of him.

"Why not?"

Her words are childish, and he almost laughs at them. Almost. But he is Draco-somewhat-nearly-Malfoy, and his heart is bitter and his not-smile resigned and not for her to see anymore. He has nimble seekers fingers and pictures with The Weird Sisters and everything he could want but her downfall.

"I believe in you."

Because she does not wish much, she just lets these things happen – _she would see beauty in the rising apocalypse rather than see beauty in him, she would shrink and spiral into nothing as long as he said what she wanted to hear and don't wake him up just yet because he is falling into her more than she is falling into him _– and this is not love.

For him, that is enough.

* * *

**IX. Queen**

* * *

"I'll make you my Queen."

Draco tells her, a ridiculous promise to give to a ridiculous girl as he plays with Luna's long pale blonde hair that is cascading over her shoulders. The ends are ratty and caked in wet mud and ugly, but her lets it rake through his slender fingers anyway and presses his pale pink lips to it anyway because it doesn't really matter as long as she believes in him like he does in her.

"Why would I want to be a Queen?"

She says airily, and although her back is turned to him, he is certain that she is looking out of the window and dreaming of being free. He reaches out and grabs her frail shoulders from behind, and goes down her unclothed back with feathery kisses to show he was never there like she was in all her unreality and hopes it means something to her.

"Because I will be King."

He murmurs, curling his head into the back of her neck as he sits up. She doesn't laugh at his words. It almost feels as though she expects it. Her body doesn't quake, and he doesn't know much about her but with her lack of flinching he isn't sure he wants to anymore.

"I can never be yours."

She is so sure that it almost hurts. But he knows she is telling the truth, that it is right and he is wrong and he is always wrong when he is with her. Her blurry, violet-streaked sight of life was all seen through the indigo sky and all she dreamed of was stars. She saw exactly what he was trying to do. It didn't stop her at all.

"Then why are we doing this?"

She knows, she's always known that he doesn't really want her and – _this is how to smash porcelain vases and see the shards mix with wilting flowers from her hair and forget the taste of fear and innocent dreams and bending over backwards because they are wired to care about one another somehow_ – she won't say sorry for this. Neither will he.

He can feel her smile.

* * *

**VIII. Sunrise**

* * *

"Stay away."

Her voice is dead and he has been waiting for this moment for his entire life but it's not quite right. He can feel her curling through his thoughts, drowning in him – _because Draco is so very beautiful that it makes her cry and he doesn't see it not once not ever because she won't let him see that he had achieved what he wanted all along at give me something, Lovegood and he shakes her very soul and foundations and whatever sanity she had ever possessed_ - and she doesn't want to surface for air.

"No."

He wants to go back to when he thought of nineteen eighty one and they sat in a field and he believed in more than his Father and his tin God and he really did want to believe in her like he said he did and he didn't mean it, he hates it when she's terrified because it shows she doesn't care for him at all.

"You are Malfoy."

'_You are bad faith. You are not good. You are nothing.'_ She means it, too. There are tears slipping down her cheeks and she is cradling herself and she is looking so ugly he can't bear it. She is a pretty girl when she throws her head back and laughs and when she tells him stupid little insignificant lies about Crumple Horned Snorcaks because she wants to believe in them and when she wants to believe in him more than anything. He backs away anyway, because he is Malfoy and she is Lovegood and there is nothing between them because he is nothing to her. She doesn't love him. She cannot love something she does not believe in.

"So?"

He doesn't love her, he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't, and – _she can whisper 'sorry' a thousand times over until her eyes are crossed and she is fatigues and dying and never mean it because Luna doesn't cry because she's lost in pangea or the Bermuda triangle or something he cannot touch and never could and something he cannot break no matter how many tears she sheds _– and he does and he won't say it. His name means more than her, he insists.

She owns nothing.

* * *

**X. Truth**

* * *

"We're doing this because you wanted to own something."

Because he is Draco, and he can't disown his name no matter how much he tries, and he is selfishly in love with – _silly little trapped hare he can capture over and over and she's nothing to him because he is Malfoy and Malfoy does not need love he just needs money and his thirst for power and his fake idols_ – her. Truth was he could follow her as much as he wanted and he could hurt her but in the end she was the one to break what was left of his sanity into miniscule pieces.

"Because I love you."

His admittance. She gets up, gets dressed. It is July the fifth and he has known her for a year. He has staplegunned her against the wall in a tangle of limbs one night and he has dreamed and believed in everything and he had never felt so alive. He feels human, and it is so utterly pathetic and disgusting he hurts. He dreams of feeling nothing again. But she's cracked him. She's shown him unreality. For all his beauty and riches and worthless rubbish, he had gained nothing.

What good was it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet – _forfeit emotion and her stupid smile and please don't leave him like everyone else eventually will and true love stories never end but false love stories can always begin_ – lose her?

He finally feels something.

* * *

**IV. Shredded**

* * *

"Why should you think I would ever want you?"

Her – _wings are torn; and no broom will hold her up long enough and she hates, despises, loves him for all his cracked up words and things she will never understand and she can't fly forever anymore because her _– mind is not as it was.

She falls.

* * *

**XI. Prelude**

* * *

He traces disappointment in the sky.

It's like a calming dot-to-dot puzzle from long ago. He used to spend his nights staring out the windows, dribbling her name and lies and searching for a star (any star, anything bright and wonderful like her) and he would know if he found one bright enough his wish would come true and she'd scream instead of him.

Her aching throat would cry for him to stop jamming the window up as far as it would go and just stop looking at her when he didn't want her. Nights like that, he never found a star _– he just saw far off twinkling muggle aeroplanes, high up, nowhere near him and distant like everything else_ – but he'd make believe. Trick himself into thinking dreams could come true like she did.

Because two months from that moment they weren't talking, and he doubted they ever would, and with her is either more alive than ever or he has never felt more dead. He's been rehearsing things to tell her – _excuses why she didn't contact him, the reason she's not there anymore, and he can't think of anything that won't break _– about his own heart instead of hers. She never believed in heartbreak. Feeling alive felt too good. But neither of them know how to stay.

He guesses he just never wished hard enough.

* * *

Eleven jumbled up pieces and I do not think I did Draco justice.

Constructive critisism in the form of reviews is most appriciated.


End file.
